In Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's essay The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception (1944), they present an argument of the status of culture that is still very relevant to us as a society today. They theorize that there is a mass audience in the world that most simply put, is being dumbed down by a capitalist society. In turn this mass audience has a hard time distinguishing the real world from a world that has been created by the culture industry.
For a long time I never associated the word culture with the word industry. I always thought of each part of the culture industry separate (ie. film industry, technology industry etc), never as a whole.
In reading Adorno and Horkheimer's essay, it became clear to me the every part of the culture industry is being molded with the intent of presenting a nice pretty package to its consumers. Very little effort is being required on behalf of the consumer if they choose to accept and enjoy so to speak what is being offered to them. This is especially relevant today with the emergence of the internet and the monumental impact it has had on society and the cultural industry overall.
I believe that in relation to a modern digital media that allows for user response- blogs, forums and other forms of online dialogue our status as media consumers has definitely changed on the surface but ultimately it has just made it easier for the culture industry to dominate and feed its audience with even more formulaic media and entertainment. Not to say that all that has come about because of modern digital media is a bad/ un-useful happening ,but as a consumer and individual we have to be careful to still keep true to real life and not some world that only revolves about being on a computer.
Adorno and Horkheimer keep in tune in their essay with relating that they believe that the culture industry is all standardization and while its very true even today, because of the digital media availiable to us it also provides us with the characteristic/option of being diversifided to a certain extent. With blogs,online discussion boards,forums etc, we are given the ability to express our opinions with millions of people around the world about almost absolutetly anything. That is extremely liberating to think about and the possibilities are endless. Although it is also becoming extremely standarized since just about anyone can create a blog/facebook/twitter. It is not all that unique anymore. Since so much content from the culture industry is always being thrown at us, it is our job as individuals to filter out what is not suitible/ useful to our overall growth of intellect and personality.
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You bring up a lot of interesting points, which leave me with questions- specifically the relationship between effort on the part of the individual and media consumption. Does media consumption have to be effortless to be considered pleasurable? Should the burden be placed on the individual to demand more rigorous media content? If this is the case, how can individuals be expected to alter the course of something as massive and all consuming as mass media?
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